I think you underestimate how quickly public sentiment can change. Just a few years ago there was public outcry, protests, etc for anything Musk related.

Now there is none of that, not many people talking about him in a political light and I'm certain public sentiment about him has gone up given it is now already more publicly acceptable to talk about things adjacent to him and his companies.

There will be die hards who will never change, but its clearly apparent on social media he is no longer getting anywhere near the hate he used to, and even people who previously weren't are now publicly praising things like Grok and recent SpaceX missions.